Environmental Movement

George Perkins Marsh 1820, a native of Woodstock, Vermont, had a distinguished career as a diplomat, scholar (he spoke six languages), and historian, but it was his work as an environmentalist that galvanized public opposition to government land-use policy and prepared the way for John Muir Frederick Law Olmstead, and Forest Service founder Gifford Pinchot.

Marsh was not die first to advocate preservation of land and resources, but he came up with economic reasons for conservation in the seminal book, Man Nature. First published in 1864 and still in print today, Man & Nature proposed the then-radical argument that humans had the power to destroy their own environment—as well as the ability to heal it.